Therapy to treat inoperable liver cancer successfully performed

A new therapy for inoperable liver cancers was on Saturday successfully performed on a 48-year-old male patient at the super-speciality Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital in Coimbatore. Development of 'Rhenium 188 Lipiodol' therapy has been a big step forward in meeting the demands for making available at a low cost and effective radio-conjugate for therapy of inoperable liver cancers, KMCH Chairman Nalla G Palanisamy told reporters in Coimbatore.

The new therapeutic radiopharmaceutical has been developed and tested in several centres around the world, including India, and for the first time in the country it was performed at KMCH, during a three-day seminar 'South Indian Society for Nuclear Medicine', by indigenous generator system, he said. After three days of observation, the patient would be sent back home and would be called after three months for monitoring, he said.

The new therapy has an excellent safety record, is well tolerated, avoids long hospitalisation and is much cheaper as it is produced by a hospital based generator system, which can be effectively used for six months and more, said Prof AK Padhy, a former member of International Atomic Energy Agency. This therapy would be a boon to the patients in India, which as of now was said to be five to six incidents out of one lakh persons. The cost would be around one-tenth of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh, being charged by the imported generator from Australia, Padhy said.

Selective delivery of radiation through the vessel supplying the tumour and targeting only the tumour tissue can give very good palliative results in quite a few of these patients, Dr Ajit Shinto, Head of Department of Nuclear Medicine, KMCH, said. The generator system has life span of six months and it can treat nearly 180 patients, if three patients were treated per day, Prof JM Jeong of Seoul National University, who developed the ready-to use-kits for the therapy, said.

This system is a new ray of hope to the numerous liver cancer patients, who have been counting their days, as their survival or death can be extended for another four to five years and lifestyle changed, Padhy said.